There is just something about New Year and getting rid of unwanted baggage,
and football is no different.

It makes the festive period a busy time for managers and their P45s. Seven have gone from the Football League in the last seven days. Three just on Tuesday.

Remember Derek Dooley? The former Sheffield United manager was once accosted by his chairman, John Hassall, shortly after Christmas. “I was looking for you the other day, but you were nowhere to be found,” Hassell said. “I know,” replied Dooley. “I never speak to football club chairmen on Christmas Eve.”

Hassall had actually just been trying to give Dooley a present, but you get the idea. Even 30 years ago a manager knew he had to be careful at this time of year. Spool forward to the present day, and they have to be even more careful. Chairmen throw their managers out with the empty wine bottles.

The latest are Walsall, Charlton Athletic and Stockport County, who said goodbye to Chris Hutchings, Phil Parkinson and Paul Simpson respectively on Tuesday.

Hutchings is used to leaving his club at this time of year. He was sacked from Bradford City in November 2000, Wigan in November 2007, and let go from Derby in January 2009.

Parkinson, at Charlton since January 2007, had not won a league game since November, their latest result a 4-2 home defeat to Swindon Town, while a recent 3-0 defeat to Notts County and 4-1 loss to Peterborough, left Hutchings’s side bottom of League One.

Simpson’s side won just five of their 23 League Two games since he took over in July.

At least in January there is some sense to offloading a manager. Chairmen give new managers time to make the most of the January window and enough games left in the season to make an impact – as Charlton look set to do with Dennis Wise.

This season they were holding out in the Football League. Paul Trollope, of Bristol Rovers, seen off in mid-December, was the only man to go since October.

Burnley were first to fold. Chairman Barry Kilby phoned Brian Laws on Dec 29 after a 2-0 defeat to Scunthorpe and politely “asked him to step down”. Richard Bevan, who as chief executive of the League Managers Association should know better, expressed surprise. “We find the timing of his dismissal very strange,” he said.

Since then they have gone thick and fast. Lancashire neighbours Preston North End followed suit less than an hour later, announcing that Darren Ferguson had been sacked after barely a year in the job. The Championship club are working up a bit of form in this regard, having sacked Alan Irvine on the same day in 2009.

George Burley and Mark Stimson were next, dismissed on New Year’s Day. Burley, appointed Crystal Palace manager last June, clearly felt the axe about to fall after his side were beaten 3-0 by Millwall. “Results keep me in the job and we’re not getting them at the moment,” he said. The board agreed.

Stimson, who was appointed Barnet manager in June and won just five of his 26 games, knew his time was up too. The 43 year-old rather brutally admitted on radio that his contract was being “terminated as we speak”.

The cullings will continue. It is all part of a football chairman’s January detox.